An address by Dillon S. Myer, Director of the War Relocation Authority,
delivered before a meeting of State Commanders and State Adjutants of
the American Legion in Indianapolis, Indiana, November 16, 1943.

I welcome this opportunity to meet with you here today and tell you
about some of our problems and policies in the War Relocation
Authority. Like practically all Americans, I have always had a great
deal of respect for the American Legion and for the principles on which
it was founded. Of course, I have been disturbed by many of the
resolutions regarding our program that have emanated from your national
organization and from state departments and local posts over the
past fifteen months. But I have felt all along that what we needed more
than anything else was to get together for a frank exchange of views.
So I am encouraged by the fact that you have invited me to this
meeting. It gives me an opportunity to talk with you about a problem of
interest to every section of the country. And it proves what I have
felt for some time now -- that a great many of you are sincerely
interested in getting at the facts about the relocation program and in
forming your judgments on the basis of full and accurate information.

To get this whole program in proper perspective, let me go back and
review briefly some of the background and early history of our program.
The War Relocation Authority was established by Executive Order of the
President about a year and a half ago -- in March of 1942. At that
time, the Army on the West Coast was preparing one of the biggest
population moves this government has ever undertaken. In the interest
of military security, it was calling upon abut 115,000 people of
Japanese ancestry -- both American citizens and aliens -- to move
from their homes. The Army's primary concern was to remove all such
people as quickly as possible from a highly sensitive military area
along the West Coast. At the same time, however, the government
recognized that it owed the evacuees an obligation to help them in
getting re-established. And that is where the WRA came into the
picture. We were set up, as the name of the agency indicates, to
relieve the Army of the burdensome and essentially non-military task of
helping the evacuated people in relocation.

Even before the War Relocation Authority was established, the Army had
made a start on this problem by asking the people of Japanese
ancestry to move voluntarily away from the coastal area and resettle in
inland communities. By the same time we came into the picture,
however, this voluntary movement had begun to create serious
difficulties particularly in the intermountain states. It was becoming
increasingly apparent that we could not have thousands of people moving
indiscriminately across the country under wartime conditions without
throwing the economy of local areas badly out of gear and without
arousing a lot of public apprehension. Toward the end of March the
Army and WRA jointly decided to stop all further voluntary migration
so that the evacuation might be carried out thereafter on a controlled
and orderly basis. This decision was put into effect by the so-called
"freeze" order which was issued by the Commanding General of the
Western Defense Command on March 27, 1942.

Almost immediately thereafter the War Relocation Authority began a
search for sites where barrack-type communities could be established.
By the early part of June we had finally selected eight sites of this
kind in more or less isolated localities -- six in the western states
and two in the delta section of Arkansas. Meanwhile, we had taken over
one of the assembly centers which the Army had established for
temporary housing of the evacuees at Manzanar, California, and we had
worked out an agreement with the Indian Service for management of
another center which was constructed very early in the game near
Parker, Arizona. This meant a total of 10 barrack cities or relocation
centers for about 110,000 people of Japanese descent. The movement of
these people from their homes into the Army's temporary assembly
centers and later into relocation centers was started toward the end of
March, 1942, and was completed in the early part of November.

While this movement was going forward, we began working out some of our
basic policies. We had to start practically from scratch. The job that
lay ahead of us was wholly without precedent in the history of the
United States government. There were no guide posts we could follow and
no previous governmental experience from which we could benefit. But by
August of last year we had accumulated enough experience of our own so
that we were able to lay down a broad framework of guiding principles
and operating procedures.

One of our major objectives was to take every possible precaution
for protection of the wartime security of the nation. Almost
immediately after the outbreak of the war, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation rounded up several hundred Japanese aliens on the
West Coast who were suspected of subversive intentions. During the
period while the evacuated people were in assembly centers, it was
not possible to carry out this screening process any further.
But as soon as we began receiving the evacuees in relocation centers,
we immediately started building up comprehensive records on the people
17 years and older. We checked into their background before evacuation
and we accumulated extensive information on their behavior at the
relocation centers. In a large number of cases we wrote back to former
employers, to local officials and to neighbors in the evacuated areas.
Our internal security or police division in each center kept careful
records on all people who attempted to stir up trouble or endanger the
peace of the community. Our Employment Division maintained a file of
current information on work performances. In fact, almost every branch
of the center administration contributed toward the building up of a
well documented case history on the individual residents.

Then in February and March of this year we collaborated with the Army
in conducting a large registration program to round out the
screening process. Questionnaires were developed both for citizens
and aliens. These questionnaires were worked out in close cooperation
with the Army and Navy and were designed to bring out basic information
on background and attitudes which these agencies had found useful in
dealing with the people of Japanese descent over a period of years.
They asked for information on topics such as education, previous
employment, knowledge of the Japanese language, number of relatives in
Japan, investments and other business ties with Japan, travel to Japan,
religious and organizational affiliations, and even sports and hobbies.
But the most crucial question was Number 28. As presented to
the citizen evacuees, this question asked whether they would state
unqualified allegiance to the United States. Since the alien evacuees
are aliens in large measure because our laws do not permit their
naturalization, they could not answer such a question in the
affirmative without becoming virtually "men without a country". The
question was rephrased
for those people and they were asked whether
they would abide by the Nation's laws and refrain from interfering with
the War effort. The registration included all evacuees at the centers
17 years of age or over. We are still registering the younger residents
as they reach the age of 17.

As the registration forms were completed, they were sent in from the
relocation centers to the Washington office. Under an agreement with
the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation assumes
responsibility for providing us with any information available in the
files of the intelligence agencies on each evacuee who is registered.
In carrying out this responsibility, the FBI has checked its files for
us with great care. Thus we are building up a comprehensive docket
on each adult evacuee which is readily available at the relocation
center and which provides us with a good indication of basic
loyalties.

A considerable number of people in this country seem to feel that there
is no way of determining the loyalty of a person of Japanese ancestry.
This is a point of view which we in the War Relocation Authority have
never shared. We recognize, of course, that there is no absolute way of
guaranteeing the loyalty of a Japanese American or -- for that matter
-- of anyone else. But we do feel that it is possible, by employing
techniques which the intelligence agencies have used effectively, to
make a determination that is wholly adequate for the purpose of
protecting the national security. And I might add that we are not the
only branch of the government which has this feeling. Both the Army and
Navy quite obviously are confident of their ability to determine
the loyalty of Japanese Americans within practical limits because
those agencies are using large numbers in combat service and in other
important lines of work. There is a battalion of American boys of
Japanese descent from Hawaii which has recently distinguished itself in
action on the Italian front. There is a combat team made up wholly of
Japanese-American volunteers both from the mainland of the United
States and from the Hawaiian Islands which is now in training at Camp
Shelby, Mississippi.

Nevertheless, we have recognized from the very beginning that there
was in the evacuated population a minority which had stronger ties
with Japan than with the United States and which might conceivably
interfere with the war effort. There are some among the aliens who have
maintained persistent contact with their native land and who have made
frequent visits there for business or cultural purposes. There are
several thousand young American citizens who have received practically
all their education in Japan and who have been affiliated with
pro-Japanese organizations in this country. Many of this latter group
have doubtless been imbued with the Japanese militaristic spirit while
others probably returned to this country for the purpose of avoiding
service in the Japanese Army. Because we have realized that there
were such people in relocation centers, we have taken particular pains
to build up a record on the background and attitudes of adult residents.
>From the very start, we have been denying the privilege of leave in
all
cases where records have indicated that the evacuee might endanger the
national security. And within the past few months, we have carried out
a segregation program to separate such people from the bulk of the
evacuee population.

Under the procedures we established, all persons who requested
repatriation or expatriation to Japan were designated for segregation.
In addition, the segregants have included (1) those who failed
to answer Question 28 during registration with an unqualified
affirmative; (2) those with intelligence records or other
records which indicated that they might interfere with the war effort;
and (3) immediate family relatives of persons in the groups
already mentioned. As most of you doubtless know at this time, Tule
Lake in northern California was designated as the segregation center.
The main movement of segregants into Tule Lake and of non-segregants
from Tule Lake to other centers took place during September and
October. But there are still about 1,900 people at the Manzanar Center
in California awaiting transfer to Tule Lake as soon as housing to
accommodate them is completed. And there are around a thousand other
people at the various centers who will probably be designated for
segregation as the leave clearance hearings are concluded. We expect
that the entire process will be finished about the first of the year
and that we will ultimately have a population in the neighborhood
of 18,000 people at Tule Lake.

I am sure that many of you would like to learn more about the events
that have taken place at Tule Lake during the past several weeks. The
story is so complicated that I do not want to take up time to discuss
it in this talk. But I have brought along several copies of a
prepared statement on the incident and will be glad to make them
available after I finish my remarks. At the same time I will also try
to provide some answers for any specific questions which you do want to
ask.

Once the segregation process is completed, the people remaining in our
nine other relocation centers will be those who have stood up under the
most careful type of scrutiny and proved themselves to be eligible for
leave whether they be American citizens or law abiding aliens. Our
policies governing the administration of those centers will be pretty
much what they have been all along. We have been providing the
essentials of living -- food, housing, medical care, and education
for the children -- and we have utilized voluntary evacuee labor to
the fullest possible extent in order to hold down the costs of
operation. Evacuees who work at the centers receive small cash
allowances for the purchase of incidental items and special allowances
for the purchase of family clothing. The feeding program is carried out
strictly in accordance with all rationing regulations and is limited to
a maximum cost of 45¢ per person per day or about 15 cents per
meal.

At all centers except Tule Lake, we also provide the evacuee residents
with an opportunity to set up their own community government
and to formulate rules and regulations for the community welfare within
certain limits. At each center there is a police force headed by
several non-Japanese officers and staffed mainly by evacuees. The
exterior boundaries of each center are guarded by a detachment of
military police who can be called within the center whenever a show of
force is necessary for the preservation of order. Aside from Tule
Lake, which is a rather special case, we have had to call in the troops
on only one occasion. The only other aspect of relocation center
management that I need to mention here is the business enterprises
which the evacuees themselves have set up on a cooperative basis to
sell goods and services to the residents.

But our primary aim is not to manage relocation centers. These
centers have often been confused with internment camps which
are managed by the Department of Justice for the detention of enemy
aliens suspected of subversive activities or intentions. Actually
the
relocation centers were established for a wholly different purpose
--
primarily to provide places where the evacuees could be quartered while
we were developing an orderly program of relocation in normal
communities. Even before the centers were fully constructed and
populated we started making efforts to reduce their population by encouraging
properly qualified evacuees to return as quickly as possible to private
life. That is our principal policy and the one that has been most
widely debated pro and con. Consequently I want to discuss this policy
with you, telling you how we go about putting it into effect and why we
feel it is a sound course from the standpoint of the national welfare.

First of all, I should explain that the relocation policy does not
apply to the segregation center of Tule Lake. The residents of that
center have been separated from the other evacuees because of evidence
that they might endanger the national security. They will not be
eligible for leave while the war is going on. But now that segregation
is virtually completed, we are redoubling our efforts to relocate the
people from the other centers in normal communities.

We started out on our relocation efforts rather slowly and cautiously
in the late summer of 1942. Throughout the fall and winter, as we
gained additional experience on the job, we gradually geared up our
machinery to handle a larger program. One thing we had to do was set up
a field organization to check community sentiment in areas where the
evacuees are relocating and to serve as a point of contact between
employers in need of workers and evacuees at the centers. Such an
organization was established in the early months of this year and is
now functioning in 40-odd communities throughout the middle west, the
intermountain states and the East. Then we also had the job of
classifying the evacuated people according to their previous employment
experience and their basic skills.

It would be possible, of course, for us to adopt a passive attitude
toward relocation merely permitting the people to leave the centers
without actively encouraging and aiding them in the process. But after
we had been on the job only a few months we began to realize with
increasing clarity that relocation centers are not desirable
institutions and that it is far better, in terms of both immediate and
long-range national interest to restore the evacuated people as quickly
as possible to life in ordinary communities.

To begin with, we realize that the cost of maintaining the entire
evacuee population in relocation centers would mean an
unnecessarily heavy drain on the taxpayers of the country. We set
up our work programs at the relocation centers in such a way that the
evacuees could contribute through voluntary work to their own support.
And we have maintained that policy consistently from the very start.
But even so, the expense of keeping 100,000 people in government
centers and providing them with the essentials of life is a heavy
one.
I am sure all of you will agree with us that it should not be
encouraged if there is any feasible alternative.

An even more important reason why we have placed so much emphasis on
immediate relocation is the nation-wide manpower shortage. We
realized from the beginning that the evacuated people represent a
significant reservoir of energies and skills which is badly needed in
our war production effort. At the start, we made rather
elaborate plans
for a work program at each relocation center. We had plans for
manufacturing enterprises through which citizen evacuees could produce
goods needed in the war effort; plans for extensive development of new
land through clearing, irrigation, drainage; and plans for large-scale
agricultural production. But before we had received more than half the
evacuee population at the centers, we were forced to recognize that
this was a cumbersome method of utilizing evacuee energies and skills
and that it was fraught with many difficulties. It meant starting from
scratch and gradually building up work opportunities over a period of
months. It necessitated requiring equipment and facilities that were
badly needed in other sectors of the national economy and in the war
effort. It involved production and sale of manufactured goods and
foodstuffs in competition with established private producers.
Everything considered, it seemed quite clear that the evacuees
could make a quicker and more effective contribution to our wartime
production needs by returning as quickly as possible to private
employment. [PHOTO: "Evacuee farm hands irrigate the crops at the
farm on this relocation center." (Tule Lake, 09/08/1942)]

But aside from those wholly practical considerations, there is another
even more significant reason for trying to depopulate the relocation
centers. I realize that one of the primary aims of the American Legion
is to foster Americanization. That has also been one of the
major objectives of our program. There are many ways to define
Americanism but I have always felt that it is a quality which we absorb
quite naturally by living in a thoroughly American environment. It is
as President Roosevelt has stated, "a matter of the mind and heart;
Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry." We
have made every effort to create an Americanizing atmosphere in the
relocation centers. We have established the curriculum for our schools
with particularly heavy emphasis on the history of American traditions
and American institutions. We have taught these subjects in adult
education classes and have stressed them in connection with public
discussion forums. But despite all our efforts, we have not
succeeded -- and I am afraid we never can succeed -- in duplicating
the atmosphere that prevails in a normal American community. The
influences that operate every day and every week to make us a
distinctive people on the face of the globe cannot be reproduced
within an atmosphere of restriction -- an atmosphere which makes a
mockery of our American traditions. Relocation centers are and
probably always will be essentially outside the mainstream of our
national life.

I subscribe whole-heartedly to the principles on which the American
Legion was founded and to the creed which is printed on the
back of all
your membership cards, and which sums up forcefully and succinctly the
major tenets of your organization. This creed is a sound guide for
every good American:

"For God and country, we associate ourselves together
for the following purposes: to uphold and defend the Constitution of
the United States of America; to maintain law and order; to foster and
perpetuate a one hundred percent Americanism; to preserve the memories
and incidents of our association in the great war; to inculcate a sense
of individual obligation to the community, state and Nation; to combat
the autocracy of both the classes and the masses; to make right the
master of might; to promote peace and good will on earth; to safeguard
and transmit to posterity the principles of justice, freedom, and
democracy; to consecrate and sanctify our comradeship by our devotion
to mutual helpfulness."

With those principles in mind, I feel sure that all of you will make
every effort to see this problem free from all angles before coming to
any final judgments.

There are a great many people in this country who feel that all persons
of Japanese ancestry should be confined under heavy guard for the
duration of the war. I want to say right here and now that I
consider such a proposal fundamentally un-American. It is contrary
to the constitution of the United States and to the basic precepts of
the American Legion. It violates our most precious guarantees of
freedom and justice. If we single out one minority element of our
population such as this one and categorically confine all members of
the group simply on the grounds of race, I believe we are embarking on
a dangerous course. Once we start moving in that direction, the whole
structure of constitutional safeguards that now protects every last one
of us against arbitrary governmental action will be weakened and
impaired. In the last analysis, it would mean that we had found the
democratic method of handling a minority problem too difficult, too
complex, and that we had adopted the easy course followed by the
dictator nations.

Since the earliest days of WRA, our problem has been complicated by the
fact that we are dealing with a mixed population. Approximately
two-thirds of the evacuees were born in this country and are
thus American citizens under our constitution. The overwhelming
majority of this citizen group have spent their entire lives here and
have received all their education in our schools. Seventy-two percent
of these citizens have never seen Japan. The remaining one-third of
the population consists mainly of the older people who were born in
Japan and were not eligible to become naturalized under our laws.
Most of them have lived here for 20 years and even longer, have
established families here and have no desire to return to Japan.

But the real point that I want to make is that we have had to deal with
both citizens and aliens at every step in our program. Because we do
have citizens in relocation centers, we have had to be unusually
careful in denying indefinite leave and in transferring people to the
segregation center. So far the Supreme Court has not handed down an
opinion on the constitutional validity of detaining American citizens.
But lawyers are pretty well agreed that it can be done even in
wartime only on the basis of rather strong evidence that the detainee
is a potential threat to the national security. Consequently, in
developing our leave procedures we have had to walk a very narrow line
between unconstitutional detention on the one hand and
inadequate
regard for national security on the other. I am confident that
we have
followed a sound middle course.

The fact that we have aliens in the relocation centers has important
implications in our international wartime relations. Unfortunately, there
are a great many American civilians and American soldiers in the hands
of the Japanese. And if we adopt any repressive measures against
Japanese nationals, the militarists of Japan undoubtedly will
take retaliatory action. Because of this fact, among other reasons,
we have tried all along to conduct our operation sanely and calmly so
as to arouse a minimum of public emotion. But in a program such as
ours, this is extremely difficult to do. Actually we have been
operating in a very highly charged atmosphere ever since we started --
and I suppose we always will.

However, I think that most of you will agree that nothing is gained by
an emotional approach to this problem and that a great deal can be
lost. Quite aside from the dangers of retaliatory action, it is also
true that the Japanese have been watching this program for
propaganda purposes. They have been picking up inflammatory remarks
made by some of our citizens and using them to convince other oriental
peoples that the United States is conducting a racial war.

In conclusion, I want to remind you once again that there is a
battalion of soldiers of Japanese ancestry in action under General
Clark at the present time. There is a combat team, also composed of
Japanese Americans, some of whom have recently asked to be sent into
action against the Army of Japan. Knowing the background of the
American Legion and the way you fought to gain citizenship for the
veterans of our first world war regardless of ancestry, I am wholly
confident that you will open your membership to these boys who are now
wearing the uniform of our country in the current war for survival.

We have tried in the War Relocation Authority to conduct our program at
all times in accordance with certain basic principles which we feel are
essential in a democratic approach to the problem. We believe that loyalty
cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and discrimination;
grows and sustains itself only when given a chance. We recognize that
the foremost task before the people of this country is to win the war.
We feel that this means concentrating on fighting the enemy rather than
fighting among ourselves, and using all our available manpower where it
will do the most good. We have confidence in the ability of the armed
forces to wage the war and in the ability of the authorized
intelligence agencies to give proper surveillance to all suspected or
potential enemies within our country. Finally we have faith in the
American way of life and in the melting pot tradition on which this
nation has developed. We believe that there is opportunity here for all
people of democratic faith and that the United States has benefited and
will benefit by providing such opportunities for all its citizens
without regard for race or ancestry.